Highly dependent on flashbacks and incessant time jumps, 21 GRAMS pans
back and forth between past, present, and future to weave together a
mosaic concerning the lives of three people: suburbanite Christina Peck
(Naomi Watts), mathematician John Rivers (Sean Penn), and ex-con Jack
Jordan (Benicio Del Toro).
The film begins by opening with the unsettling fact that Christina
is a struggling drug addict and her life, for some reason, is in painful
turmoil. As the story progresses through flashbacks and flash-forwards,
the audience realizes that Christina is a happy suburban wife and mother
of two girls, as well as the drug-addict girlfriend of John Rivers:
the question remains... who came first?
Enter Jack Jordon whose God-fearing overtly Christian faith has him
preaching down the halls to all he sees. Extending his 'religious services'
to his home, Jack does his best to forget his rough past as an ex-con
and raise his family right. But Jack’s zealous faith provokes tension
at home; moreover, he is constantly struggling to stay away from crime
and the bottle. After winning a truck from his local church raffle,
all seems to look on the bright side, that is, until one fateful night
he ends up hitting a man and his two daughters, killing all three.
Meanwhile Christina Peck lay grief-stricken on the hospital floor,
having just lost her two daughters and found her husband fatally wounded
from a deadly car accident. With her life unraveling before her eyes
she makes the crucial decision to terminate her husband's life-support
comatose state and donate his heart to another needy patient: John Rivers.
Receiving his heart through an anonymous donor program, the once fatally
ill mathematician John Rivers rests uneasy until he can locate the family
who saved his life. Hiring a detective to help him locate the family,
he instead finds a woman who has been widowed and left motherless after
losing her entire family to a car crash caused by ex-con Jack Jordon.
Determined to make contact, Rivers abandons his personal responsibilities
and leaves his British wife to struggle with her own desires to have
a child, which have proved in vain many a times before. With her hopes
resting on artificial insemination she urges John to agree to the process
so that the two can start a family of their own. Nevertheless there
is something very wrong with their relationship and the film slowly
reveals the constant tension between husband and wife as a long standing
problem resulting from character incompatibility. As John stays away
from home for longer periods of time he begins to place himself within
Christina's 'social centers'.
Having turned to the bottle and drugs for comfort, Christina copes
with her loss as best as she can. But her daily trips to the gym and
nightly adventures in night-club bathrooms only provoke further depression.
As John attempts to intervene and make conversation he finds himself
struggling to tell Christina about the truth behind his new heart as
well as wrestling to suppress his own feelings for the heartbroken woman.
As their friendship slowly progresses into a tragically unstable relationship,
Christina vacillates between temporary happiness with John and a severe
depression set in by the memory of her lost life.
But John is struggling too; his body is rejecting his new heart, that
is, Christina's husband's heart. Without agreeing to turn himself back
into the hospital and await another donor there is no guarantee for
life. But the catch is that once back in the hospital, there is no guarantee
the next transplant will take successfully either. Determined to die
living, John hides his secret from Christina and his wife as the two
women struggle with their own problems.
But Jack Jordon is struggling as well. His faith has grown rocky behind
the cold prison walls and his love for his wife has turned cold, wrought
by shame for the consequences of that one night many years ago. Doing
her best to get Jack out of prison early, Jack's wife holds on to her
love for her husband and family as best as she can. But back home Jack's
faith is rediscovered and his children, though young, can't seem to
look at him without shuddering: his hypocrisy is written all over his
face. Unable to bear the shame Jack leaves his family one more time,
and heads for the desert where he will earn his keep and live humbly
in a run-down motel.
His life seems secure enough, empty, but secure, that is, until Christina's
painful memories determine her to try to kill the murderer of her family.
Employing the help of John, the two set out to find Jack and close the
final chapter of Christina’s former life. Meanwhile John’s wife has
packed up and moved back to England, still determined to inseminate
John’s donated sperm. Likewise, John's health is progressively failing
and Christina’s drug use is anything but conquered. A dramatic climax
unties all three characters yet again with fateful consequences for
all, particularly one. With the dramatic monologue about 'losing 21
grams before you die', the film concludes with as equally dark a conclusion
as it opened with its somber commencement.
21 GRAMS is a powerful film with gripping direction and acting on behalf
of all involved. Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, and Benicio Del Toro lose themselves
in their roles and expose the nitty gritty ugly truths behind the fragility
of life. Though the film does reside in a realm where heavy content
never leaves the screen, this ‘depressing’ film is nonetheless powerful
and intensely moving. Moreover, the structure of 21 GRAMS, though confusing,
attests to the genius of its direction: think of the film as a cinematic
version of William Faulkner, particularly "Sound and the Fury".
But the powerful effect of time-skipping only renders the film more
effective and its chaotic structure mirrors that of both the lives and
lifestyles of each of the three characters. With much drugs, alcohol,
depression, and psychological depression involved, the characters are
anything but linear, and the film’s structure appropriately mirrors
the mental mayhem of its protagonists.
Undeniably the content is heavy. But, there are some powerful life
lessons to take away from the film. That isn't to say that this film
is by any means preachy either. Simply, 21 GRAMS exposes how tenuous
both the life of man and his bond to mankind are. Life is precious,
ideologies are abstract, and life goes on, with or without you: these
are all heavy themes powerfully suggested throughout the film. Depicted
in an undeniably heavy way, 21 GRAMS wraps you up in its drama and spits
you out thinking anew about your own responsibilities in life. Though
clearly for older audiences, 21 GRAMS is a profoundly insightful look
into human causality and the realization that our personal struggles
are only important insofar as we are affected by them: the film dramatically
exposes the undeniable truth that men are but 'shadows and dust' in
the grand scheme of things: those 21 grams may be all we can call our
own.
Main Characters:
Naomi Watts plays Christina Peck, an upper middle-class suburbanite
who is left to cope with the tragic deaths of her husband and two daughters,
who died from a fatal car accident.
Sean Penn plays Paul Rivers, a fatally ill mathematician who is coping
with his health and his British wife’s incessant desire to attempt motherhood,
yet again.
Benicio Del Toro plays Jack Jordan, a God-fearing ex-con whose struggle
to raise his family proves more difficult after he finds himself in
an accidental car crash involving the death of a man and two girls.
21
GRAMS... THE DRAMA REVIEW
